No Wind of Blame ih-1

by Джорджетт Хейер

  "Oh, don't ask me!" besought Ermyntrude, with a shudder.

  It was indeed unnecessary; the history of the morning's encounter with Wally came pouring out, a little garbled perhaps, and certainly incoherent, but graphic enough to present Mary with a comprehensive picture. Ermyntrude spoke in thrilling tones, working herself up to the moment when, starting up in bed, and flinging wide two plump arms, she demanded to be told why she should bear this humiliation, when a better and a nobler man asked nothing more of life than to be allowed to take her away from it all.

  "The Prince?" asked Mary.

  Ermyntrude sank back on to her pillows, and groped for the smelling-salts. "He couldn't remain silent any longer," she said simply. "He has struggled, but when he saw - when he realised the life I lead, the way Wally treats me, flesh and blood wouldn't stand it! He spoke! Oh, Mary dear, when I think that if things had been different I might have been Princess Varasashvili, it seems as though I just can't bear it!"

  Mary was silent for a moment, but presently she said: "Well, why don't you divorce Wally, Aunt Ermy?"

  Ermyntrude had cast an anguished arm across her eyes, but she lowered it at this, and replied with a note of sound common sense in her voice: "Divorce Wally, on account of this Baker hussy? I'm not such a fool!"

  "You needn't cite her as the co-respondent. It could be an unknown woman, couldn't it?"

  "Catch Wally doing anything so obliging!" said Ermyntrude caustically. "Of course he wouldn't! And what would I look like, cut out by a cheap little Well, we'll leave it at that, for I'm sure I've no wish to soil my lips with what she is! Besides, look what harm it would do my Vicky, if I was to go and get a divorce!"

  "I don't really see why it should."

  "I dare say you don't, but I wasn't born yesterday, and I know what people are! Goodness knows the right people look down on me enough without my giving them something fresh to turn up their noses at!"

  "Oh!" cried Mary, moved for the first time during this scene, "you mustn't think that sort of thing, Aunt Ermy! If people look down on you, you can be sure they aren't the right people, and send them to the devil!"

  "That's all very well for you, dearie: you've had education," said Ermyntrude. "I can't afford to send people to the devil, though I don't deny I've often been tempted to. Funny, isn't it, when you think how I could buy up the Derings and the Bawtrys, and all the rest of them, and never notice it? Oh well! there's no use repining, as they say. But there's one thing I'm determined on, and always have been, and that is that there's never going to be any sneering at my Vicky. She's been brought up a lady, and her father was a real gentleman, and whatever else I may have been, I've always been respectable, and no one can say different!"

  "But no one would think you less respectable for having divorced Wally," said Mary.

  "That's all you know, dearie," replied Ermyntrude tartly. "There aren't any flies on me, thanks! What with my having been on the stage, and having the kind of looks I have, I can just hear all the dirty-minded Nosey Parkers saying it was all a put-up job, and Wally doing it to oblige me, just so as I could marry a prince!" Mention of her exalted suitor, and the thoughts of splendour his title conjured up, proved too much for her. She abandoned herself to despair, moaning faintly that she would have to go on being a bird in a golden cage.

  Mary could not help laughing at this. "Dear Aunt Ermy, at least the gold is your own! Has the Prince actually asked you to divorce Wally, and marry him?"

  "A woman," proclaimed Ermyntrude in throbbing accents, "doesn't need to be told everything in black and white! The Prince is the soul of honour."

  "Quite," said Mary dryly. "Does he know that you don't approve of divorce?"

  "I had to tell him! I couldn't let him waste his life on me, could I? The might-have-been! Oh, dear, my head feels as though it would split!"

  Mary moistened the handkerchief again, and laid it across Ermyntrude's brow. "If you don't mean to divorce Wally, what are you going to do?" she inquired,

  "God knows!" responded Ermyntrude, letting her voice sink a tone. She added, more prosaically, but with quite as much feeling: "I'm not going to spend my poor first husband's money buying that creature off, and that's flat!"

  "It certainly seems most unfair that you should have to," Mary agreed. "At the same time, won't there be rather a nasty scandal if she isn't provided for?"

  "Let him do the providing!" said Ermyntrude, her bosom heaving. "The idea of his expecting his wife to pay off his mistress! Oh, I can't bear it, Mary! I can't go on! What - what, I ask you, does the future hold for me? Neglect and scandal, and me still in my prime, tied hand and foot to a man like Wally! I can see it all! He'll go from bad to worse, drinking himself into his grave, and behaving so that I won't be able to have a housemaid in the place that isn't over sixty and bare-Tipped, just like that nasty old Williams, who led his poor wife such a dance when I first came to live here - before your time, that was, dearie, and personally I always did say and I always shall say that she drove him to it, going about with a face a mile long, and her hair scratched up on the top of her head, and her nose always shiny, and red at the tip, like she did!" She broke off, realising that this reminiscence was not entirely felicitous, and retrieved the situation with a magnificent gesture indicating her own charms. "You can't say Wally's goings-on are my fault!" she said. "Look at me! Thrown away, Mary! Thrown away!"

  "I don't want to sound unsympathetic, Aunt Ermy, but after all, you've known what Wally is for ages. Let me bring you up some tea, and some thin toast, and you'll feel better."

  "I couldn't touch a morsel!" said Ermyntrude. "You know what I get like when Wally's upset me. Feel how burning hot I am! I shall probably be ill for a week. That's the worst of having an artist's temperament: one suffers for it."

  If Ermyntrude contemplated extending a nerve-crisis over a week, Mary could not help feeling that the other inmates of the house would suffer to an almost equal extent. She agreed that Ermyntrude was certainly in a high fever, and refrained from pointing out that the day was bidding fair to be a very hot one, and that a fat, satincovered eiderdown might well be expected to make anyone burning hot. She offered to ring up Dr Chester's house, and to ask him to call.

  This suggestion found favour. "Tell him to bring me a sedative," said Ermyntrude in a fading voice. "I couldn't bear anyone else near me, but Maurice always understands. He's the kind of man I can talk to."

  Mary went away to perform this mission. While she would naturally have preferred Ermyntrude not to talk of her present difficulties to anybody, she was not a girl who expected impossibilities, and she considered that if Ermyntrude wished to unburden herself further it had better be to Maurice Chester, who had known her for many years, than to the Prince, or to Robert Steel.

  She found Vicky hanging up the receiver of the telephone in the hall. Vicky had enlivened the Sabbath by coming down to breakfast in abbreviated tennisshorts, and a sleeveless shirt. She said, when she saw Mary: "Oh, hallo! That was that corrosive Harold White. I do think he's getting awfully redundant, don't you?"

  "What does he want this time?"

  "Wally. It's getting to be a habit with him. I say, would it be heartless, or anything, if I went and played tennis? Because I've told White to send Alan over. I quite meant to be a Comfort-to-Mother, in pale-blue organdie, but she rather turned her face to the wall."

  "No, much better leave her alone. I'm going to ask Maurice to come and see her. You might have invited Janet, too. Then you could have had a four, with the Prince."

  "Yes, I might, but I thought not. She's got such fuzzy edges. I think she's out of focus. Besides, she's going to church. I've asked Alexis to come and play, though, which is definitely a Sundayish sort of thing for me to have done, because as a matter of fact I've got frightfully tired of him."

  "Oh, so have I!" said Mary involuntarily. "But he'll leave tomorrow, won't he?"

  "Well, I'm not sure, but I've got a crushing suspicion that he means to linger. So I told him in
the most utterly tactful way that Ermyntrude's one of those rather obsolete people who reckon nuts to divorce. It may shift him, but, of course, now that Wally's started this imbroglio, I do see that the stage is practically set for Alexis to do his big act. I suppose you wouldn't like to come and play tennis?"

  "No, I can't. I must look after Aunt Ermy. What on earth are we going to do with the Prince this afternoon? We ought to have fixed up a proper tennis-party, of course. Well, it's too late now, and in any case, if Aunt Ermy doesn't pull herself together She left the sentence unfinished, and picked up the telephone.

  Dr Chester answered the call himself. He asked what was the matter with Ermyntrude, and when Mary replied guardedly that she was suffering from one of her nervous attacks, he said: "I see. All right, I'll come along at once," in his unemotional but reassuring way.

  He had been on the point of setting out on his round, and he arrived at Palings ten minutes later, encountering in the hall Prince Varasashvili, who had changed into tennis-flannels, and was going out to join Vicky and Alan on the court.

  Prostrate Ermyntrude might be, but she was not the woman to receive any gentleman (even her doctor) in a tumbled wrapper, with her hair in disorder, and her face not made-up. A message was brought down to Dr Chester that she would see him in ten minutes' time if he would be good enough to wait; and the Prince at once took it upon himself to conduct him into the morningroom, and to beguile the time for him with conversation. When Mary came, not ten, but twenty minutes later, to summon the doctor, she found that he had been cajoled into talking about prehistoric remains, the study of which was one of his hobbies. He had collected a certain amount of pottery and a number of flint weapons in the Dordogne, and in East Anglia, but the Prince claimed to have visited Anau, in South Turkistan, and was describing some fragments of pottery of geometric pattern in a way that made it seem probable that he really had seen these treasures.

  Dr Chester remained with Ermyntrude for quite half an hour. When he at last left her, he found Mary waiting for him, in a large window embrasure half-way up the broad staircase. He smiled at her look of inquiry, and sat down beside her on the window-seat. "All right," he said briefly.

  "I suppose she told you the whole sordid story?"

  "Oh yes."

  "It's about the limit of Wally," Mary said. "I don't wonder Aunt Ermy's upset. I only wish I knew what I could do to help."

  "There's nothing that you can do," he responded.

  "I know, and I feel futile. I did suggest divorce to her, but it didn't go down very well."

  "No, she wouldn't like that."

  "Well, what have you advised her to do? You may just as well tell me, for she will."

  "Pay, and look pleasant."

  "Maurice, you haven't? But why should she? Really, that sticks in my throat!"

  "My dear girl, either she must pay, or face the very scandal she dreads. There's nothing more to be said about that."

  "What's Baker demanding? Does anyone know?"

  "Five hundred."

  "Maurice, it's blackmail!" He shrugged.

  "But, Maurice, it may not even be true!"

  "Apparently, Carter knows that equally it may be true."

  "You can't seriously approve of Aunt Ermy's being made to pay a sum like that!"

  "I think it's very hard luck on Ermyntrude, but I also think Gladys Baker has been grossly imposed upon."

  "Yes, if she'd been a sheltered plant, but as far as I can make out she's nothing of the sort, but perfectly able to take care of herself."

  "You're not in a position to be judge of that," he replied.

  She said rather crossly: "I never thought you'd give advice like that to Aunt Ermy. As a matter of fact, I was afraid you'd wish her to get rid of Wally, and do nothing about this mess of his."

  He looked at her in faint surprise. "Why should I?"

  "Well, I know you're fond of her, and you can't pretend that you think Wally's likely to improve with keeping."

  "You're quite right: I am fond of her, but I know very well that a divorce would only make her unhappy. As for your Cousin Wally, this episode may have taught him a lesson."

  "You know perfectly well that nothing will ever teach him anything," sighed Mary.

  He rose. "Well, whatever I may think, there's nothing to be gained by discussing it," he said. "I've given Ermyntrude some cachets to take, but there's nothing much wrong with her. Keep her fairly quiet today: she'll be all right by tomorrow."

  "It would be a lot easier to keep her quiet if this wretched Russian weren't here," said Mary. "Vicky said an hour ago that the stage was all set for him to walk on and do his big act, and she's about right. I don't want Aunt Ermy to divorce Wally, though I think she has every right to, and I shall be very thankful if they agree to bury the hatchet. But he's in one of his impossible moods, and what chance can there be of Aunt Ermy's making it up with him while her precious Prince is beguiling her with his title and his flashing smile? What did he want with you just now?"

  "I really don't know. Something that Bawtry said yesterday seems to have put him on the scent of my pet hobby-horse. I don't think he's really interested, though. He angled a little for an invitation to come over to my place and see my finds, but I'm afraid I wasn't very responsive. Do you want,a respite from him? Shall I ask him to come over this afternoon?"

  "Maurice, it would be an awfully Christian deed!" said Mary gratefully. "But I don't quite see why he should want to." Light dawned on her; the troubled crease vanished from between her brows; she gave a sudden ripple of laughter. "Oh, what a fool I am! Of course I see! He's hoping to pump you about Aunt Ermy's money! He wants to know whether it's hers, or goes to Vicky when she comes of age! He tried me, but I snubbed him."

  "Let him hope!" said Chester, with rather a grim little smile.

  Mary went with him downstairs, and out into the sunlit gardens. The tennis-court was within sight of the house, and they walked there together. Vicky was playing a single with Alan, while the Prince looked on from the side-line, but she left the court when she saw the doctor approaching, and ran to meet him, to know how her mother was. He returned a reassuring answer, and repeated it to the Prince, who came up a moment later to inquire solicitously after Ermyntrude. After that, he said easily that it had occurred to him that the Prince might be interested to see his small collection of prehistoric specimens, and invited him to call and take tea with him that afternoon.

  The Prince was all smiles, but did not know whether perhaps his kind host and hostess had made other plans for him. However, Vicky promptly set that doubt to rest, by saying: "Oh no, because poor darling Ermyntrude will be feeling frightfully moth-eaten, and I happen to know that Wally's going over to see Harold White at five. So do go! I'll lend you my car."

  "Then at about five, shall we say?" suggested the Prince.

  Chester, trying to infuse some enthusiasm into his voice, replied that he would be delighted. He then glanced at his watch, and announced that as he had several patients to visit before lunch he must be going.

  Mary walked across the lawn with him to the front drive. She said in an exasperated tone: "How like Wally to trail his coat in front of Aunt Ermy like that! Why on earth he must choose this of all days to go and hob-nob with White, God alone knows!"

  Chester did not make any reply to this outburst, and she said no more. As they reached the drive, Wally came out of the house. He stopped dead at sight of the doctor, and said with strong indignation: "Yes, I might have known you'd turn up. You needn't tell me you were sent for, because I'd have bet any money you would be. And don't start looking accusingly at me, as though it was my fault, because it wasn't! Anyone would think I was Bluebeard from the way Ermy's been behaving. And if you want my advice, don't you ever marry an actress, unless you're the kind of man that likes having a wife who carries on like Lady Macbeth and the second Mrs. Tanqueray, and Mata Hari, all rolled into one! Before breakfast, too!" he added bitterly. "If anyone's got the right to call you in, it's me
! But if I took to my bed, and pulled down the blinds, and refused to eat any food, would I get any sympathy? Oh no! Oh dear me, no!"

  "Certainly not from me," said Chester, getting into his car, and switching on the engine. "I've given your wife some cachets to take, and provided she's not agitated again, she should be all right in an hour or two. Goodbye!"

  Wally watched the car move forward, and presently vanish from sight round a bend in the drive. "Given her some cachets to take! Yes, I've no doubt! The wonder is he didn't give her a bottle of water with a bit of peppermint in it, and charge her three-and-sixpence for it! Cachets! Full of bread pellets, if we only knew!"

  "Uncle Wally, is it true that Baker's trying to get five hundred out of you?" Mary demanded.

  He looked rather suspiciously at her. "What do you mean, is it true? You don't suppose I'd give him five hundred because I've got a kind heart, do you?"

  "No, I don't. But it seems a sum out of all reason! In fact, it looks to me like blackmail."

  "You don't know anything about it. These things cost a lot of money. Besides, five hundred doesn't mean anything to Ermy."

  Mary struggled with herself. "Uncle, can't you see how iniquitous it isthat she should have to buy you out of this at all?"

  "It's her own fault," replied Wally. "If she'd made a decent settlement on me at the outset, she wouldn't have had to stump up now, because naturally I'd have seen to it myself. You're very full of sympathy for her, but what do you suppose it's like for me to have to borrow money from my wife to provide for poor little Gladys? Humiliating, that's what it is, but I'm not lying in bed complaining of the way I've been treated."

  It was obviously hopeless to argue with him. Mary sa, coldly: "You haven't a leg to stand on, and you know it. Is it true that you've arranged to go over to the Dower House this afternoon?"

  "That's right! Now start to nag about that! Run up and tell Ermy! Then we can have another nice scene."

  "Look here, Uncle, if you want Ermyntrude to forgive you, don't annoy her again! It's sheer folly, for you know what she feels about Harold White! Surely you needn't go and see him today?"